An Inuit hunter from Arviat, Canada, shot a blonde polar bear and it’s causing quite a stir this week. Not because the hunter, Didji Ishalook, killed the animal for sustenance, but rather the various news outlets alleging this was a grizzly-polar bear hybrid, a clear sign of global warming. While DNA evidence was only recently sent out to make a ‘hybrid’ determination, that didn’t stop The Washington Post from running a misleading story that global warming was forcing grizzlies to hook up with polar bears. The DNA results are still being processed.

Ishalook, who hunts mainly in Canada’s Nunavut territory, brought the blonde bear to people’s attention when he shared his kill photos on social media May 15, writing beneath it: ” “Female grizzly/polar bear. Got my first bear woohoo!!” Inuits hunt bears for food and use their skin for clothing.

The media machine took the normally common story of Inuits hunting and built another rickety polar bear story about grizzlies invading the Arctic and raping the natural world, namely the female polar bear population, due to climate change. That was the final straw for zoologist Dr. Susan Crocker, who devoted three postings on her Polar Bear Science website trying to insert the facts into the global warming hybrid hysteria.

Andrew Derocher, a professor of biological studies at the University of Alberta, chimed in and made the highly unscientific statement that grizzlies are moving further north because the Arctic is getting warmer, contracting the polar bear’s territory and forcing the couplings of these two distinct ursids. “I hate to say it, but from a genetic perspective, it’s quite likely grizzly bears will eat polar bears up, genetically,” he told the Washington Post.

Hardly. Rather than wait for the DNA to come back, the global warming alarmists went into full-scale hysteria mode, forcing Dr. Crocker to devote three extensive posts on this so-called ‘grolar’ story. Calling these silly hybridization stories inevitable, Crocker said it would eventually lead to the “global warming blame game.” And it did. She even wrote up five facts that challenge the hybridization nonsense.

She points out that the polar bear territory is not contracting, despite the nonsensical statements, as a result of sea ice changes since 1950. The “regions where hybridization has been documented (Doupé et al. 2007) are still polar bear territory, as is the region where the latest putative hybrid was shot (still not confirmed by DNA).” Polar bear populations, which are adjacent to grizzly populations in Canada, have remained stable and are increasing.

Grizzlies invading the West Hudson Bay coast are moving south, not north, the exact opposite of what Derocher told the Post. She notes that if a “grizzly male met a polar bear female along western Hudson Bay (which is the most recent putative hybridization event took place and where more grizzlies have been seen in recent years), it could only have come from the north.”

Population tables in the SARA Registry about grizzlies shows “few” grizzlies populations in Manitoba (south of Nunavut), and shows no grizzlies in the provinces of Ontario or Quebec. She points out: “How can grizzlies being moving north into Nunavut and Churchill, due to climate change or anything else…if there are no grizzlies to the south?”

Hybrids of grizzlies and polar bears are also extremely rare. So why did Derocher tell the Post, “What we’re starting to see in the Canadian Arctic is three-fourth grizzlies.” Crocker writes that only one hybrid has been identified since 2010. The cub was the result of a hybrid mother and a grizzly father, but “hardly represents an epidemic of back-crossed hybrids.” Prior to that, there was a confirmed hybrid in 2006. That makes a whopping total of two hybrids in 30 years.

David Lewis

Hybridization is nature is both rare and normal. Genetic tests show that the Red Wolf is a hybrid of the wolves and coyotes. I have heard of Hybridization in wild birds.

However, if you are a climate alarmist and there is no real scientific evidence to support your cause, then creating evidence by claiming a perhaps hybrid bear is a proof of global warming is the way to go.

Del

I flew helicopters for years across the Canadian North, from The Yukon to Baker Lake and Churchill. I have seen three polar / grizzly cross-breeds. The one in the Yukon was mainly white with brown patches, an absolutely massive animal. South of Faro / Ross River and well south of the Arctic Circle. It towered over a caribou and crushed it down with both front paws. Local natives claim that polar bears breed with the Barren Lands Grizzly ( or the other way around ) and have been doing so for generations.

Get a daily digest of the day’s headlines

Recent Comments

Amber

If left wing pinko Saunders doesn’t like him he sounds like he has potential .
He looks like a guy with a bit of backbone and won’t be bullied by the Demo rat
whiners who have infiltrated the EPA .
Good luck Mr. Pruitt . …. hire security . When the looney tunes get desperate( and they are ) they go into ugly mode . Taking apart their $Trillion dollar con game is going to get them down right belligerent but who cares ? They did get about 1 % of the vote
after all . In other words the science fiction is settled in the minds of voters by about
99 % . The debate is over in their hot air world .
Drain away Mr. Pruitt the public backs you despite the shrill sound of whiners who just had their piggy bank broken .

Amber

The NASA data manipulators collectively don’t have an IQ over 38 . Bullshit merchants about to be out on their ass . Maybe Britain would like to hire NASA rejects .
Where oh where are Dicaprio and Gore going to get their alarmist propaganda ?
When is the much vaunted IPCC report coming out ? That’s right NEVER .
The jig is up they were played as useful idiots and are no longer required .
Did the IPCC hot pants smut writer ever beat those sexual harassment allegations ? Quality right through the organization .

Amber

Why would virtually no change to Antarctic ice in over 100 years be a surprise at all .
Whether it’s minus – 60 or minus – 58 certainly we know it is fricking cold and it is not about to thaw . Throw a few volcanos open below the surface and a part of it might
but if that is considered caused by climate change the science fiction is bigger than
we know .
The question is how much will the Antarctic grow by over the next 1000 years ?

Amirlach

JayPee

I’m willing to consider your argument, but I’m disturbed of your willing to give credence to the unproven and unfoundedly assumed presumption that CO2, CH4, and any other gasses that the extremist left hates are upon their dictum alone the mythical GREENHOUSE GASSES as they define them to be.

I ask you not to buy into their argument without the proof that they have never had.
They have always had conjecture, lies and hysteria and even a low percentage of consensus ( as if that means anything ).
But they have NEVER had proof of their mythical GREENHOUSE EFFECT ( as defined by the extremist left ).